Like this:

I spent the weekend trying to start my garden. Except I got carried away and bought too many plants at the farmers market. I cannot plant any edible plants in my yard because the soil is still contaminated with the foam they sprayed to put out the house fire and bits and pieces of my old mold infested house. Our request to have the top two feet of soil removed and replaced with clean fill was yet another thing contractor never bothered to do.

I soon realized I didn’t have enough planters to accommodate all the plants. I asked husband to build me a raised planter box and several trips to the home improvement store ensued. We eventually ended up buying a large pool liner (like the ones you’d put fish in if you wanted a water feature in your yard) and adding drain valves to the bottom. Husband rolled up his sleeves and dug the rather large and deep hole required to sink the pool liner into and then unloaded the excessive amount of soil bags needed to fill the 270 gallon area, mostly by himself as I have been battling tendonitis in my arm from excessive data entry.

Once the plants were in the new garden bed we turned the hose on, only to find out that over the winter our external faucet had frozen, the pipe had split and water was pouring into our interior basement walls. This was not the first time we’d used the hose this spring. The few other times husband had been filling the bird bath, water had also poured into the walls, soaking the insulation and drywall down in that corner of the basement. Since we don’t go into the basement often we had no idea. We had to tear out the drywall, insulation and pull up the carpet.

A call to the plumber who installed the line didn’t go well. They basically said the 6 mo warranty was up and they’d only come out if we paid them. The company who sprayed our house down with antimicrobial spray and warrantied our house from mold growth for 25 years is no longer in business so that was thousands of dollars down the drain. It put a huge damper on the weekend.

Eventually I used my diplomatic skills to get the plumber to come out and fix the line for cost of parts but it seems like as soon as we think we’ve learned about every deficiency in our house we find a new one. If life keeps kicking you, if you don’t get a break from the shitstorm, if you have to watch your body break down around you because you work too much than how long can you continue on? When does it end?

There has been a video circulating about the social medias. It describes and outlines the benefits of transitioning standard roads and parking lots into solar roads and parking lots. It’s pretty neat. The company behind them makes a pretty strong argument for why we should adopt the technology. Take a moment, watch the video or glance at the website.

I have to say, I am all for embracing the concept. I think replacing our pot hole filled asphalt and concrete road system with energy generating solar panels makes sense. Easier to maintain, beneficial to the people and planet and the only reason I suspect it won’t be accepted is because big oil will see it as a threat to their profit margin.

Much like many “green” technologies that get bought out or buried by industry titans who don’t want to change gears, this project is at risk of getting shoved…

Ever since the beginning of humanity, we have fought with one another. Disputes over land, disputes over goods, disputes over religion, people and animals. We are constantly disagreeing with each other and it never seems to stop. As we have evolved as a species, so has the way we dispute. We created the concept of war to take a dispute and turn it into a profitable killing machine. We evolved the way we battle so that the next major war may not even involve people on the ground fighting, but could be all machines, drones and computers hacking away our arbitrary assets. We have spent far too much time devising strategies to “take out” our opponents and forced millions to die for the desires of a few.

When will we stop using force to make others fall in line? How many people have to die, get injured or suffer deep…